DEATH OF THE ALBUM part 1

DEATH OF THE ALBUM part 1

Let me tell you about my iPod breakup. This is not the main subject of this post, but I’ll get to it, I promise. See, when they introduced system 3.0 for the iPod, I rushed in. Being the Apple enthusiast in general, it seemed fair to think I’d find some fun in getting the latest system for my iPod Touch. I knew they’d finally added the search function, cut & paste was finally possible (you’d think they’d have gotten the hang of that sooner…), the shake-to-shuffle feature sounded like fun. I didn’t like the idea that I had to pay for the update, though. Seemed like a form of abuse. It didn’t stop me from downloading the OS the very day it was out. And of course, I installed it right away.

At first, it seemed like a good idea. My iPod felt improved, more stuff I could do and all that. Then I plugged it in my car : that was when the real trouble began. Turns out my car and my iPod no longer communicate. Which really really sucks. I exchanged iPods with my son for a while, he was more careful than I with the new OS, but eventually, I wanted what was mine, so I tried downgrading to 2.0. That turned out to be a waste of time. Either all the packages I downloaded were wrong for my iPod, or I can’t get the hang of the procedure. Anyway, at some point, it seemed I’d wasted enough energy on the problem, and it was time to move on. No more iPod in the car was the new standard. If I still wanted to use my driving time to listen to podcasts, I’d have to start burning CDs. Which I’ve done, to my great eco-shame, since these are really throwaways. And it’s been sorta working for me, as long as I try to have always at least one disc in advance, so I don’t find myself stuck on a surprise drive with just 15 minutes left on my favorite podcast.

Music, though, is a completely different story. Trying to choose songs to make a few varied enough CDs for the car has proven to be a tough process. See, the iPod really changed the way I listen to music. Used to be, I’d pop an album and listen to it all, or most of it anyway. With the iPod, there was new possibilities that became the norm. I got into this habit where I tend to like to have a good cross section of an artist. A period, four or five albums, maybe, and then I’d move randomly in those albums. Doesn’t work too well for concept albums, but in general, it gives a great perspective on musicians and their progress, where they’ve been, where they’re going. This allowed me to rediscover some bands I’d neglected. For instance, if you take Dredg’s albums as one whole, they’re a wonderfully consistent band. Another case : mixing together all three albums from TV On The Radio, you can see the depth of this band and how, if they keep this up, they’ll almost certainly become one of the world’s greatest band in the future.

So you can see how I can be stumped when I have to cram about 15, 20 songs on one burned disc to keep me from sleeping at the wheel. It’s a brutally long process that I’m not enjoying in the least.

Which brings me, after an introduction much too long for the scope of it, to the actual subject of this post. The death of the album. It’s happening, it’s already happened. I’m a part of the problem with my random habits. Radiohead are part of the problem now that they pretend they won’t make any more albums in the foreseeable future. The internet and filesharing are also part of the problem, although maybe this tandem is not quite the boogeyman the record industry would have us believe. And of course the record industry is part of the problem, although in the higher spheres of the corporate offices, they don’t see it that way.

But before we start the mourning machine, I gotta ask, what is an album anyway? It’s certainly not the CD that I purchase, since it’s now fully downloadable and we can completely skip the optical phase. So it must be a collection of songs, right?

I don’t know, really. Because if an album is a collection of songs, it sort of makes it sound like the prog rock ideal of the concept album. And although there is a soft spot in my heart for the concept album in all its varied forms (Deltron 3030, anyone?), it seems too limiting a definition. So what indeed is an album?

More in my next post.